


Love

by Marfabu



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Strong Language, like cursing but it's not?? it's not bad ok let me live, slight highschool mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 11:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9069349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marfabu/pseuds/Marfabu
Summary: Dan loved her when they were just friends in the crowded corridors of a stupid secondary school, and he loved her through the distance that university brought them. Maybe he even loves her more than he knows and more than he'll ever be able to reflect on.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a really long time since I've published any fanfiction, so any thoughts are welcome! Comments are always appreciated tenfold and kudos are as well. 
> 
> Please excuse any errors I made with the British education system, I'm actually American and have little to no idea as to what happens over there with education. Please let me know if I got anything wrong or if anything needs correcting!

Dan—for what is not the first, and will definitely not be the last time—is struck by how beautiful she is. Soft, parted lips and gentle skin that he could touch forever and still find new places to adore. Gentle, flowing hair and a laugh that never fails to send his heart into double time.

Dan loves her. He comes to the realization in a dimly lit club playing shitty music, that he has _always_ loved her in different ways from the moment that she stumbled into his life, apologetic smile and all.

He loved her as a friend in the corridors of their secondary school, pushing her way through the crowds of people to make it to him after classes were out. He loved the way that she’d apologize to everyone that she squeezed past even though she barely grazed them with her touch. He loved her soft, apologetic eyes when she was more than a minute late to meet him even though he would always insist that he would not mind—could _never_ mind—waiting for her.

_“Sorry I’m late,”_ she would laugh as she wrapped her arms around him in a much-needed after-school hug. _“Big crowds are hard to get through when you’re not a giant like Daniel Howell.”_ If he had minded her being late, it all found a way to dissipate when she hugged him like she missed him.

Dan loved her deeper when they graduated and went to different universities with promises that they would never lose touch, they meant more to each other than that. They would _always_ mean more to each other than that.

_“I don’t want us to be just Facebook friends,”_ she had said when they finished packing his run-down car with the shit that he needed, or thought that he would need, for university, _“I want us to be real friends.”_

She had blushed with the weight of her confession, Dan remembers, with the fear that she had stepped over some unspoken boundary. But he had known exactly what she meant behind the shitty metaphor, or at least enough to agree with it.

He had loved her when she had called him sobbing for what would not be the last time about her boyfriend who had left her for someone else. Dan had loved her through the tears that he had wanted to kiss away through the shitty cellphone reception.

_“I’m sorry,”_ she had wheezed out in between tears, _“I just, I don’t know what to do. I don’t think I’d know what to do without you. You’re the only constant in my life, Dan, and I’m sorry that I keep calling you like this.”_

Dan didn’t mind, though. He would never mind any emotions that she would feel because he loved her, even if he had no way of knowing it then. _“I’m always here for you, you spork,”_ he had said through a strained laugh, _“you should know that by now.”_

He had loved her when she had gotten wasted for the first time, even though her hair was a mess and her mascara had been running and she was throwing up over his toilet at three in the morning. He would have loved her even if she had managed to miss the toilet entirely. 

Dan loved her through her first hangover with glasses of orange juice and apologies as to how _fucking wasted_ she had gotten, how he shouldn’t have had to see her like that, she didn’t mean to always come to him when the bad things were happening. As though he never came to her with his bad moods and bad feelings, he had realized. She internalized things too much and made herself the problem, which was something that he never much appreciated in her.

He had loved her when she told him to drop out of university with an angry tone that meant no harm. Dan had laid on the floor of her dorm room, a sobbing mess as he tried to explain that he had probably failed all of his exams and that law school was stupid, school was stupid, so what even was the point?

_“Just drop out!”_ She had demanded with her hands on her hips as she stood over him while he laid on her bedroom floor. _“University isn’t for everyone, Dan, and maybe it isn’t for you. That doesn’t make you **stupid** , holy shit. You’re so smart, Dan. And funny, and witty, and genuinely nice to people, and this fucking…This fucking **law school bullshit** isn’t much of a help to your mental health. Take a gap year, for God’s sake!” _She had run her hand through her hair and shaken her head with a forlorn look on her face.

Dan knew that she didn’t like to say that she loved people often, but he knew that her speech on leaving school was how she was trying to convey it.

_“There’s no shame in changing your passions, Dan,”_ she had told him after a moment of silence, _“and maybe being a lawyer just isn’t your passion anymore. There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in redefining yourself.”_

He loves her now, with her hair a mess and her eyes wild as she pulled him out onto the dance floor of the sweaty, overcrowded club. He loved her as she pulled him close to her, closer than best-friends should be when they dance to a slow song.

She wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him down to her level so that their foreheads touch in a breathless reminder of how beautiful her eyes are. He dares not to breathe because she’s wearing her perfume, and if he smells it again he’s going to kiss her and he doesn’t want to do that because he loves her too much to lose her. Dan loves her as a friend and he loves her deeper than that all at once, and his mother always told him that true love doesn’t make sense but he’s a cynical mess who doesn’t believe in true love.

But he knows that she does, as her smile overtakes her face as the slow song that he doesn’t recognize pulls into the chorus. She’s not cynical and she’s nothing like him, and he relishes in the wistful thought that maybe opposites do attract and the bullshit that he learned in his chemistry class with her wasn’t as big of a waste as he thought it was.

“I’ve missed this,” she says so softly that he strains to hear her over the song, “I’ve missed us being together.”

He knows that she means it platonically, that she’s missed hanging out with him, but his heart still beats faster at the thought that she’s missed _him._

“I’ve missed this, too,” he replies without thinking, without really knowing what _this_ is or what _they_ are.

But she smiles anyway, despite his not-knowing, and it’s so genuine that his breathing falters for a moment and she _must_ know. They’re so close that there’s no way that she doesn’t hear his heart against her ear as she rests her head against his chest. There’s no possibility that she doesn’t feel how his breathing is failing him against her ear.

And he prays to a God that he isn’t sure is even there that she doesn’t hear him when he whispers against her hair, soft and ticklish against his mouth as he presses an almost-there kiss to it the top of her head, _**“I love you.”**_


End file.
